SpyLamp and SpyBike GPS tracking device!

Great idea, expensive though..

Wouldn't trust it to be honest, on the site they acn't even spell lock properly...it also says long battery life...how long is there a warning if the battery is low ? how do you know it hasn't run out...just my look it would get stolen when the battery was flat..most bikes get stolen for parts so it's wouldn't take them long to find it...

Dave, I looked at buying a Spylamp a month or so ago - sounds like I'm on the same boat as you, had a pride-and-joy bike nicked a while back. Not only could I not order a Spylamp (out of stock) but the Spybike just didn't exist on the site. So I can only imagine it is brand new.

I agree there's no information about it, in fact one of the top google hits was this thread (but been thinking about joining bikeradar for a while now in any case). Anyway I have just ordered one which admittedly is a bit of a gamble, but I'll post info back here when I form an opinion.

Cheers, Pete

looks easy to remove.

looks easy to spot.

nicklouse wrote:

if you want to get your bike back stop it getting stolen in the first place

Great advice, must remember that.

Great product although I can see a possible negative with it. I think it could get some bike owners into trouble,
Lets say the bike is stolen and you track it to a house. Now I know some people will call the police and let them deal with it but many wouldnt. some owners may go to the house and kick off resulting in the owner either being arressted for assault or being badly assaulted them selfs.

One other thing, Is this insurance approved?
will it lower the premium

Well what do you know - a replacement unit sent out to me behaves exactly the same way. 30 minutes of initial activity, then the thing turns itself into a paperweight. Grrr.

After several moths of troubleshooting, I think that I'm finally ready to transfer my Spybike to the bike and use it in anger. That's right - it's taken weeks and weeks for me to work out where the weaknesses in the system lie, and to get to a point where I'm reasonably confident that it might actually work reliably. Although I haven't tested it inside a metal steerer tube, since my initial miserable failures with the device.

The problems I ran into were many and varied, and with little or no clue as to what particular problem was causing the unit not to perform as expected on any given day. But they include the following:-

Battery life/capacity - I have accumulated half a dozen 16340 3.7V lithium ion rechargeable batteries. Some I purchased off ebay, some arrived with the Spybike and its replacement. And the quality control is clearly none too impressive. One cell (labelled "Palight", 880mah) refuses to charge. Two cells ("Trustfire" 880mah) charge, but don't perform. And of the three unbranded cells I got with the Spybike units (all claiming 700mah), only two seem to work. Of course, figuring this out when encountering the other issues listed below wasn't easy, as five of the six cells *appear* to charge and *appear* to work, but only two *actually* do. Now how long they hold charge for is anyone's guess, as using the Spybike to track flattens the battery within a few hours. And I can't find any other way to tell if the device is working or not, because it has a nasty habit of ignoring any texts I send it for status updates. Changing batteries every two or three days is impractical, but that's the only way *I've* retained any confidence that it'll work when needed. I might try some more, slightly bigger batteries if I can find *reliable* ones, but it uses a type which only comes from shockingly dodgy ebay sellers from China.

Mobile phone (GSM) reception - shockingly bad on my corner of the street at the best of times (I need to run to the end of the garden to take a call on *most* mobile phones), and the rides I do on the bike are often into signal-free areas as well. Combined with a very small antenna on the Spybike, it struggles to get a GSM signal a lot of the times. Which it deals with in the time-honoured mobile phone fashion - drain the battery faster.

GPRS transmission - has to be set up right with your carrier's settings. Hunting around on the web, my carrier had three different settings - only one of which worked. Finding out which was the right set of parameters with flat batteries, poor GSM reception etc wasn't easy (hint - it's the last set of the three I tried).

GPS reception - it needs a decent view of the sky. Which it *probably* isn't getting in my garage. Or maybe it is, but with no GSM reception in there, I'll never know. Out and about in my car, it seems fine. Most of the time. Until the battery dies. Did I mention that the fabled 3-12 months battery life is on the proviso that it's not actively tracking? when it is, the battery life is measured in a few hours.

SIM card credit - yup, although having purchased a pay as you go SIM card with £10 credit on it, somehow that credit magically vanished. Or the device blew through its allowance inside of a fortnight. Either way, radio silence. Since I topped it up over a month ago, prior to the latest batch of testing, I've used exactly 20p of credit, so goodness knows where that first £10 went. I suspect a dodgy ebay seller conned me.

Now I've finally got to the point where I trust two batteries out of the six I have, I've set up a reliable way of monitoring the SIM card's credit (you can't simply send a text from the Spybike to check on credit remaining as you would your mobile phone), believe I can tell the difference between no GSM and no GPS reception, I think I'll try it in the bike. But the battery life issue has been a real nuisance - my Spybike is *not* sending me any text alerts when the voltage drops too far, it simply turns itself off. Usually on any day when it's had to do some GPS tracking.

In theory, this is a great device - much cheaper than the equivalent car-based trackers, with no expensive subscriptions for one thing. The technologies are all pretty mature. But they are combined in a way which isn't very user-friendly, and there are many potential failure points, which in my case cascaded to the point where I really struggled not to hurl the thing out of the window. Remember the old adage of never buying version 1.0 of anything?

No, when it works it works fine, and beats the heck out of carrying a five kilo chain (because pretty much anything lighter is going to get cropped). But to be worthwhile, it needs to function 100% of the time, with a pretty clear diagnostic route if it doesn't.

Some of my initial problems were user error, but I can't for the life of me work out why one day it'll track my car all the way to my front door, then the next day track up to the final mile, then another day not track at all (with good, fresh batteries each time). And when I tried it inside my metal steerer tube, metal frame, it really didn't want to play ball.

"Not buying version 1.0" might have a workaround - the version 2 Spylamp. Although I like the idea of something hidden within the bike (espeically as I've had some theiving oik nick one lamp just for the batteries inside), I hear that the Spylamp has better GPS/GSM coverage. And if it works reliably, I'll be sure to sing its praises loud and clear.

The Cyclist of Catan wrote:

No, when it works it works fine, and beats the heck out of carrying a five kilo chain (because pretty much anything lighter is going to get cropped). But to be worthwhile, it needs to function 100% of the time, with a pretty clear diagnostic route if it doesn't.

Some of my initial problems were user error, but I can't for the life of me work out why one day it'll track my car all the way to my front door, then the next day track up to the final mile, then another day not track at all (with good, fresh batteries each time). And when I tried it inside my metal steerer tube, metal frame, it really didn't want to play ball.

"Not buying version 1.0" might have a workaround - the version 2 Spylamp. Although I like the idea of something hidden within the bike (espeically as I've had some theiving oik nick one lamp just for the batteries inside), I hear that the Spylamp has better GPS/GSM coverage. And if it works reliably, I'll be sure to sing its praises loud and clear.

It's good that you've satisfied yourself, and this will no doubt be of help to others who (for some reason) think this might be a good idea.

But as you say, without 100% reliability it's an expensive, useless and worthless piece of rubbish unfortunately.

There is no such thing as 100% GSM or GPS coverage either, any system relying on either of these will suffer the same problem.

Having used this thread to help guide me as to whether I should buy one of these little beauties, I thought it would be worth giving some user feedback now that I am in possession of one.

I am the proud owner of a spylamp 2 which arrived within a couple of days of ordering. I went out and bought myself a simple pay as you go SIM card with £5 on and proceeded to set it up. I admit that I did need to contact their help desk to get assistance with this, mostly because I wasn't being very bright! The setup is really not that difficult but, in any case, I can confirm their helpdesk is exceptionally helpful so any problems can be ironed out very quickly.

Now, the device.....the ironic thing with this device is that we will never know how well it works until some little vagrant actually tries to steal my bike. Nonetheless, I have tested the scenario. Once "activated" the device will send you a text message as soon as the tracker senses movement (a vibration), this happens straight away assuming the bike has reception (as so do you)! It then proceeds to upload its position every 20 seconds so that you can track it online. When I have tested this outside (as if my bike was being ridden away somewhere) in London the positions are fairly accurate, probably to within about 50m (at worse) and sometimes spot on. When I have tested inside, this is much worse and it often does not get a GPS lock and just provides a GPRS triangulation which can be a few hundred metres out.

So, you need to think about how this may be useful....If you are near to where your bike is locked (in a pub etc) then the vibration detector should alert you quick enough to get there and prevent the theft in the first place. If they get away with the bike then you will be able to track them pretty accuratelt whilst outside, but once they get to a destination (inside) you may only their last position (which could be 50m) leaving you with a reasonable amount of room for error (ie. if it is a council estate then it could be in any one of numerous flats). This is not ideal, but I still think it is a vast improvement on nothing at all and I know from first hand experience that (in London at least) the police are nowadays far more interested in helping track down bicycles and so are likely to actively support this and go and seek out the little buggers.

That's about it....in short, I would recommend it. Paying £100 once is less then insurance after a couple of years and there is no excess. If you have any specific queries, I would be happy to help

No idea if jecwells is connected to Integrated Trackers, who make the Spylamp/Spybike, but I have no reason to believe he is any different to me - a happy customer.

I've given up on the Spybike1.0 that I purchased. It would occasionally work well for me, but most of the time it either failed to work (for a variety of reasons) or failed to work well enough. And for a security device, where what you are chiefly buying is piece of mind, it didn't give me much. Your mileage may vary, but I found that a lot of the time it struggled for a GSM signal (needed to transmit data "home"), and struggled for a GPS signal (needed to send *meaningful* data). Removed from the bike.

What I've been much happier with is the performance of the Spylamp2.0. I'm told that it has a better GSM aerial and a better GPS aerial, and I believe it. Until I finally lost patience with the Spybike1, I tried several journeys where I "stole" my own bike, by leaving the devices armed when I went out for a ride. The Spybike1 often failed to work; the Spylamp2 has occasionally glitched, but works much, much better, giving more accurate location traces, uploading those traces to the web server, and sending SMS texts to my phone much more reliably. It is worth noting that these devices are not intended as recreational GPS trackers - smart phones and GPS computers do that job far better, not least because they are designed for it. The Spy devices draw quite heavily on their batteries while actively tracking, so the battery needs charging after every ride or two (depending upon distance) if you insist on leaving the thing armed and on during a ride. I also noticed that once we were out in the sticks, it would struggle for a GSM signal to upload data or send SMS messages (which in turn uses more battery power, as like most mobile devices it draws more current when the GSM signal is weak). Not an issue as a security device, though, given that most bikes are nicked in - and are likely to be taken to - urban locations. I've found the GPS trace will usually put the bike within 2 metres of where it actually is; right now, mine is reporting as being in the house across the road from me, but that's almost certainly good enough for the Police to be able to retrieve it if it had been stolen - they tend to know who the bike thieves and fences are. Even the GSM positioning (which it will report if it can't get a GPS signal, like if it's indoors and you don't have a trace to the doorstep because it arrived at the thief's lock-up in the back of a van) will put it in the right "cell" (usually 300-500 metres) and again that will help the Police to work out which of the local lowlives have it; and if that isn't good enough, they're eventually going to take the bike outside, at which point it will get a GPS lock and can report that. Like Trackers for cars, no system is perfect (jammers are probably being used by those who steal high-end cars), but it's good enough IMO.

I would recommend the Spylamp2 - it works as designed, and gives me more piece of mind than I would get from either a D-lock alone or even simply storing my bike in my own locked garage. I *think* my garage is reasonably secure; I *know* that it isn't totally secure. But with the Spylamp2 on the bike, I can leave it in the garage and be pretty confident that if it isn't still in the garage when I've got home from a day at work or a weekend away, I'll be able to work out where the bike was taken to. And although it's taken some tweaking to get the vibration sensor's sensitivity settings right - set the threshold too high and the Spylamp2 might not recognise when the bike is in motion; set it too low and you get endless false alarms (which if nothing else can burn through the SIM card's credit) - I'm happy that I'm there now. On the subject of SIM cards, I'm told that a multi-network data SIM is ideal (the more networks it connects to, the better the chances of it being able to "phone home" if the bike is nicked); I haven't found a package I like the look of yet, but I have found a very cost-effective SIM-only deal, which provides 100 free SMS messages and 400mb of data each month *without* needing a top-up. That should be more than enough of each for the Spylamp2 (one problem I had previously experienced was the mobile phone provider disabling a previous SIM card if it wasn't topped up each month, and £10 per month on top of the purchase of the Spylamp2 would add significantly to the expense; but now I get the required texts and data free!). Just leave the device "armed" when you park up somewhere (or put the bike away for the night), and disarm it when you're actually riding the bike so as to preserve battery life. I'm told that the battery is good for 3 months on standby, but it's probably best to charge it every month (you don't want to be on the last little bit of battery life when the bike goes walkabout, after all). And if you forget to arm it and the worst happens and the bike does go, you can still get a position fix from it or arm the Spylamp2 remotely.

I'd like something a bit more stealthy - the Spybike was a better idea IMO, as it was hidden. Some bike thieves strip stuff like lights off a bike pretty quickly (of course, some thieves trip everything - and would even find something like the Spybike, hidden in the steerer tube). The designers have thought about that, and the Spylamp2 attaches with a tamper-proof Torx bolt, and not everyone has one of those in their tool kit (I now have several, as the lamp has to come off the bike for charging). In addition, although the Spylamp2 would make a pretty poor rear light, it does actually function as one - a thief looking at it is going to see a normal light, and it turns on and lights up like a normal light too. So I'm reasonably happy that if the bike got nicked, the Spylamp2 would be on it and tracking for long enough to tell me where it's gone. Nothing's ever going to keep a bike 100% safe, but the combination of good D-lock, stout chain at home, frame tagging and the Spylamp2 means that I'm as confident as I can be that my "bike for life" will remain mine so long as I'm sensible about it.

FWIW, I am not affiliated to Integrated Trackers, the makers of the Spybike/Spylamp. In the interests of full disclosure, I paid the full retail price for the Spybike1 but received the Spylamp2 free of charge after having had so much trouble from the Spybike1. Would I recommend the Spylamp2 to others? Absolutely, and I'll probably buy a second one for my wife's bike at some point in the near future.